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Sunday, April 26, 2020

Book Spotlight on 10 literary works by B S Murthy

BS Murthy

BS Murthyis an Indian novelist, playwright, short story, non-fiction 'n articles writer, translator, a 'little' thinker and a budding philosopher in ‘Addendum to Evolution: Origins of the World by Eastern Speculative Philosophy’ that was originally published in The Examined Life On-Line Philosophy Journal, Vol. 05 Issue 18, Summer 2004.

Born on 27 Aug 1948 and schooled in letter-writing, by 1983, he started articulating his managerial ideas, in thirty-odd published articles. However, in Oct 1994, he began penning Benign Flame: Saga of Love with the ‘novel art' and continued his fictional endeavors in ‘plot and character’ driven novels, Jewel-less Crown: Saga of Life and Crossing the Mirage: Passing through youth.

Then entering the arena of non-fiction with a ‘novel’ narrative in Puppets of Faith: Theory of Communal Strife, possibly a new genre, he ventured into the zone of translations for versifying the Sanskrit epics, Vyasa’s Bhagvad-Gita (Treatise of self-help) and Valmiki’s Sundara Kãnda (Hanuman’s Odyssey) in contemporary English idiom.

Later, ascending Onto the Stage with Slight Souls and other stage and radio plays, he returned to fictional form with Glaring Shadow - A stream-of-consciousness novel and Prey on the Prowl - A Crime Novel to finally reach the short story horizon with Stories Varied - A Book of Short Stories.

While his fiction had emanated from his conviction that for it to impact readers, it should be the soulful rendering of characters rooted in their native soil but not the hotchpotch of local and alien caricatures sketched on a hybrid canvas, all his body of work was born out of his passion for writing, matched only by his love for language, which is in the public domain in umpteen ebook sites https://g.co/kgs/q6fp5o

Some of his published articles on management issues, general insurance topics, literary matters, and political affairs in The Hindu, The Economic Times, The Financial Express. The Purchase, The Insurance Times, Triveni , Boloji.com are at https://independent.academia.edu/BulusuSMurthy

He, a graduate mechanical engineer from Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi, India, is a Hyderabad-based Insurance Surveyor and Loss Assessor since 1986.

He takes a keen interest in politics of the day, has an ear for Carnatic and Hindustani classical music and had been a passionate Bridge player.

He is married, to a housewife, has two sons, the elder one a PhD in Finance and the younger a Master in Engineering.

1_ Benign Flame:Saga of Love

Roopa marries Sathyam, hoping that he would help her become a doctor but as he fails her, feeling let down, she insensibly seeks lesbian solace in her friend Sandhya’s embrace. Soon, in a dramatic sequence of events, Tara, a suave call girl, tries to rope Roopa into her calling; Roopa herself loses her heart to Sandhya's beau Raja Rao, and Prasad, her husband’s friend falls for her. And as Prasad begins to induce Sathyam to be seduced by whores to worm his way into her affections, Roopa finds herself in a dilemma. But as fate puts Raja Rao into Roopa’s arms in such a way as to lend novelty to fiction, this ‘novel’ nuances man-woman chemistry on one hand, and portrays woman-woman empathy on the other.Who said the novel is dead; 'Benign Flame' raises the bar as vouched by -The plot is quite effective and it’s a refreshing surprise to discover that the story will not trace a fall into disaster for Roopa, given that many writers might have habitually followed that course with a wife who strays into extramarital affairs - Spencer Critchley, Literary Critic, U.S.A.The author has convinced the readers that love is something far beyond the marriage tie and the fulfillment of love can be attained without marriage bondage. The author has achieved a minor revolution without any paraphernalia of revolution in the fourth part of the novel – The Quest, India.The author makes free use of – not interior monologue as such, but – interior dialogueof the character with the self, almost resembling the dramatic monologue of Browning. Roopa, Sandhya, Raja Rao and Prasad to a considerable extent and Tara and Sathyam to a limited degree indulge in rationalization, trying to analyse their drives and impulses – The Journal of Indian Writing in English.Overall, Benign Flame is a unique attempt at exploring adult relationships and sexuality in the contemporary middle-class. All the characters come alive with their cravings and failings, their love and their lust. Benign Flame blurs the lines and emphasizes that life is not all black and white - it encompasses the full spectrum of living. - Indian Book Chronicle. GOOGLE BOOK LINK

2_ Crossing the Mirage - Passing through Youth

If passing through youth was like crossing the mirage of life for Chandra and Nithya, it proved to be chasing the mirage of love for Sathya and Prema though for plain Vasavi, Chandra's pitiable sibling, it was the end of the road.As life brings Chandra, who suffers from an inferiority complex for his perceived ugliness, and Nithya, who was bogged down being jilted by Vasu, together, they script their fate of fulfillment.And as poetic justice would have it, Sathya, who caused Prema's heart burn, himself was led down the garden path by Kala, doing a Sathya on Sathya.Just not that, life has in store just deserts for Vasu owing to Nithya's retribution as he tries to stalk her. Besides, after many a fictional twist and turn, the way the story ends, challenges the perception that fact is stranger than fiction.GOOGLE BOOK LINK

3_ Glaring Shadow - A stream of consciousness novel

In a stream of consciousness mode, ‘Glaring Shadow’ is the self-account of the life and times of a man, who liquidates his immense wealth only to consign it to the flames. The agony and ecstasy of his life as he makes it big in our materialistic world and the way he loses his soul in the bargain, only to regain it when tragedy strikes him makes one ponder over the meaning of success in life. This philosophical ‘novel of a memoir’ is a compelling read that is conducive to contemplate about the nature and scope of human relationships.GOOGLE BOOK LINK

4_ Jewel-less Crown: Saga of Life

It's perilous penning this blurb. It's fine when a man is modest about his work. It even affords him the aura of an invisible crown!

But what about his work?

Were it an art or craft, it is there for all to see. What of the literary work of an unheralded author? Well, lauding the same might raise one's eyebrows. Failing to praise wouldn't make a 'jewel-less crown' either!Why not see, if this is the great Indian novel.

This is the story of the rise and fall of an ambitious man, the decline, and the decay of his conniving wife, the trials, and tribulations of their wayward son as well as the grit and gall of a spirited woman, who enters into his life.This depiction of their life and times not only pictures the facets of ambition and achievement, intrigue and betrayal, compulsion and compromise and sleaze and scandal, trial and sentence, but also portrays the possibilities of repentance and resolution, love and empathy coupled with compassion and contribution, leading to the spirituality of materialism, and that makes it the saga of our times.The story of a lifetime, truly.GOOGLE BOOK LINK

5_ Prey on the Prowl - A Crime Novel

Who could have poisoned Ranjit the realtor, Shakeel the Inspector, Pravar the criminal and Natya his accomplice?Well, the needle of suspicion tilted towards Pravar that was till he perished with his mate, but then who was the one? Could it be Radha under the scanner for her role in the death of her husband Madhu and his mistress Mala, Pravar's sister? Or was it Ranjit's spouse Kavya, who owing to Stockholm Syndrome, takes to Pravar her kidnapper.As these deaths by poisoning puzzle Dhruva, Radha, who worms her way into his life, avers that Kavya had the motive and the means to kill her spouse, her paramour and his wife beside the cop.However, Dhruva begins to look around for the culprit reckoning that when the ill-motives of the natural suspects to commit a murder are an open secret, someone with a hidden agenda might be tempted to use that as a camouflage for his subterfuge.GOOGLE BOOK LINK

6_ Stories Varied – A Book of Short Stories

This collection of Indian short stories deals with women's dilemmas in the Indian social milieu accompanied by unique denouements.While 'Ilaa's Ire' contrasts woman's lot of the day with her eminence in the Vedic Age, '201' Qualms" depicts her predicament, torn between personal loyalty and citizen's responsibility.As "?" addresses woman's marital stress in an alien land, 'Cupid's Clue' is about her acting on rebound in her native place.Even as 'Autumn Love' lets woman discover the marital void in her life, 'A Touchy Affair' makes her amenable to her man's other woman.Just as 'Love's How's That' inflames woman's old flame, 'A Hearty Turn' brings her innate lesbian leanings to the fore.If 'Love Jihad' bridges lovers' religious divide with a secular plank, 'Tenth Nook' creates her marital gulf on the materialistic ground.While 'Eleventh Hour' is about woman's lust for love, 'Twelfth Tale' underscores her zest for power.GOOGLE BOOK LINK

7_Onto the Stage – Slighted Souls and other stage and radio plays

A compendium of the author’s stage and radio plays: "Slighted Souls" is a poignant love story set in rural Telangana, beset with feudal exploitation of the downtrodden dalits. Besides forcing the dalits to toil in the fields as bonded labor without impunity, the land owning doras had no qualms in reducing the womenfolk of this ilk as sex slaves in the gadis."Men at work on Women at work" is a tragic-comic episode depicting the fallout of sexual harassment at the workplace in the Indian urban setting with its traditional cultural underpinnings."Castle of Despair", built on the slippery ground of man's innate urge for one-upmanship, portrays its facade of falsity on the grand stage of human tragedy.The radio play, "Love on Hold", lends voice to the felt anxieties of a man and a woman as their old flame gets rekindled and the dilemmas of possession faced by the couple in a conservative cultural background.GOOGLE BOOK LINK

8_Puppets of Faith: Theory of Communal Strife

This thought-provoking work, besides dissecting the anatomy of Islam, steeped in the Quran, seeks to depict the psyche of the Musalmans, shaped by the proclivities of their prophet, vicissitudes of his life and the attitudes of his detractors, which the mechanism of their umma perpetuates. More to the point, aided by “I’m Ok – You’re Ok”, the path-breaking work of Thomas A. Harris and Roland E Miller’s “Muslim Friends–Their Faith and Feeling”, this book, for the first time ever, psycho-analyzes the imperatives of the Muslim upbringing, which has the potential to turn a faithful and a renegade alike into a fidayeen.Also, apart from delving into the ironies of the faiths that affected the fate of the peoples, eclipsed the cultures of communes, altered the course of history and afflict the politics of the day, this book examines how the sanaatana 'Hindu' dharma came to survive in India, in spite of the combined onslaught of Islam and the Christianity on Hinduism for over a millennium. This book is for those who wish to be aware of the follies of their faith and the foibles of others to lighten the burden of dogma and reduce the baggage of prejudice postulated in its thirty-four well-structured chapters.Possibly in a new genre, this free ebook is a book for our times.GOOGLE BOOK LINK

9_ Bhagvad-Gita: Treatise of Self-help

Bhagavad-Gita is the most beautiful, perhaps the only true philosophical song existing in any known tongue’ so opined William von Humboldt.In this modern rendition, the beauty of the Sanskrit slokas is reflected in the rhythmic flow of the English verses of poetic proportions in modern idiom even as the attendant philosophy of the song that is the Gita is captured in contemporary idiom for easy comprehension.The general consensus is that the in vogue Gita of 700 slokas has many an interpolation in it, but no meaningful attempt has ever been made to delve into the nature and extent, not to speak of the effect of these on the Hindu society at large. The methodical codification of interpolations carried out here puts the true character of Gita in proper perspective. Identified here are hundred and ten slokas of deviant nature and or of partisan character, the source of so much misunderstanding about this book extraordinary, in certain sections of the Hindu fold. In the long run, exposing and expunging these mischievous insertions is bound to bring in new readers from these quarters to this over two millennia old classic besides altering the misconceptions of the existing adherents.GOOGLE BOOK LINK

10_ Sundara Kãnda: Hanuman's Odyssey

While Mahabharata's Bhagvad-Gita is taken as a philosophical guide, Ramayana's Sundara Kãnda is sought for spiritual solace; many believe that reading it or hearing it recited would remove all hurdles and usher in good tidings! Miracles apart, it's in the nature of this great epic to inculcate fortitude and generate hope in man for it’s a depiction of how Hanuman goes about his errand against all odds. Besides, it portrays how Seetha, on the verge of self-immolation, overcomes despair to see life in a new light? With rhythm of its verse and the flow of the narrative this sloka to sloka transcreation of the canto beautiful of Valmiki's adi kavya - the foremost poetical composition in the world, Hanuman's Odyssey that paves the way for Rama to rescue his kidnapped wife is bound to charm the readers and listeners alike. Interestingly, as the following verse illustrates, it was the forerunner of the magic realism of our times – “Gripped she then him by shadow / Cast which Hanuman coast to coast, Recalled he in dismay then / What Sugreev said at outset / That one fiend had aptitude / To grip its prey by mere shadow.”GOOGLE BOOK LINK

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PREETHI VENUGOPALA has a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and a master’s degree in English literature. Born and raised in Kerala (India) she lived and worked in Dubai for a few years. She now lives in Bengaluru, Karnataka (India) with her husband and son.